


ready, set, go

by mutterandmumble



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Compliant?, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, First Meetings, Gen, Humor, Pre-Canon, vague romantic overtones, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26694415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: In which all roads lead to Rome, or else to Richard Campbell Gansey IIIOr: several very awkward overtures of friendship, done in quick succession
Relationships: Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	ready, set, go

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for swearing, repeated descriptions of minor blood/injuries, and mentions of death in a humorous context
> 
> For my first foray into raven cycle fics, I’ve decided to stop making sense entirely. Also I am unfortunately _terrible_ with canon details and i couldn’t remember for the life of me when these two met- were they childhood friends? Did they meet at Aglionby? I don’t know, but I _do_ know that i was 3k words in when i realized that I didn’t know, so if something doesn’t fit with the canon timeline then that would be why. Anyways, other than that this took way longer than it should have but it was fun!! I liked getting to establish a bit of a baseline for their characters, even if I’m not fully sure about them yet

Ronan meets someone new right on the tail end of the evening, when it’s still bright enough for the trees to look like cutouts against the sky but not bright enough for them to be afforded any details other than the odd curls of a few stray leaves. He meets his someone new in the same way that one might _meet_ gravity or _meet_ a sidewalk, meaning that he trips and falls and suddenly becomes very, very aware of the harsh realities of both of these things as they’ve gone and reintroduced themselves like one might by throwing a glass of water in your face. It’s less of a meeting and more of a rude awakening; he trips and falls and he feels for a moment that he’s teetering on an edge, and he trips and falls and thinks _damn this sucks,_ and he trips and falls and brings someone down with him. It’s a grand flurry of limbs and warmth and strangled half-yelps, and it hurts. It hurts a _lot_ , as these things tend to do, and as a general rule Ronan is feeling many, many things- unless of course he’s _asked_ , in which case he’s feeling nothing at all- but as of right now the only thing that he can muster is annoyance.

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Ronan groans. His knee is digging into something soft. His left index finger is tangled up in someone else’s hair. His cheek is pressed flush against the sidewalk and his foot is thrown limply over the curb, the tip of his shoe dragging down onto the softer asphalt of the road, and his blood rushes through his veins and up to his head and makes the trees and grass and concrete move in lazy circles as Ronan tries to distinguish himself from the rest of the world. He can feel the thump and thunder of the person beneath him, their heartbeat and their breathing and all the other little machinations that make up a human being, and it’s the sort of moment that sticks in your mind and stays there against better judgement.

Ronan has had a number of such moments in his life though none so alive as this one, none so blatantly made of the same stuff that he is. Skin and teeth, brain and bone, the jut of a wrist pressed into his forearm and the curve of a shoulder poking into the fragile bit of skin where his jaw melts into his neck. A spill of books scattered off along the sidewalk, as much a victim of gravity as the rest of them, what looks to be a receipt from a pizza place, a long piece of white yarn, and an old, thick leather journal that looks well-worn and well-read and well-loved.

“Well. This is unfortunate,” says the whirring mass of flesh and blood beneath him. The voice is warm and rich, rounded by a thick accent but sharp regardless and rife with good humor. Ronan recognizes that voice, because anyone would recognize that voice; he knows that voice and he knows the face that will be attached to that voice, and he knows the easy smile and the straight teeth and the blank stare hidden behind thin wireframe glasses. He knows, he knows, he knows. 

Ronan scrambles away as quickly as he’s able, a scowl cutting harsh and automatic over his features. Richard Campbell Gansey III does much the same, though his journey back to the land of the upright is more of a controlled glide, one smooth movement that continues until his spine is straight up and down again. Richard Campbell Gansey III would not be caught  _ dead  _ scrambling _ ,  _ and Richard Campbell Gansey III would not be caught  _ dead  _ being rude, so he adjusts his glasses first and the proceeds to twist his face into the textbook picture of surprise; eyes perfectly widened, head jerked the proper amount back, one hand still splayed out on the concrete behind him. He’s not wearing his school uniform, but he’s in the unofficial off-duty Aglionby boy outfit anyways, the unwrinkled khaki shorts and boat shoes and a polo shirt that is, inexplicably mustard yellow. Where one would get a mustard yellow polo shirt Ronan doesn’t know because Ronan has no interest in procuring a mustard yellow polo shirt, nor would he  _ ever  _ have any interest in procuring a mustard yellow polo shirt as any other than kindling. 

“Are you alright?” Richard Campbell Gansey III asks. His glasses have started slipping down his nose again and when he pulls his other hand up from the sidewalk to fix it he balks- a strange thing in his body, a choppy mix of confusion and hesitation that he lets live only for a moment before squashing it back down- and then blinks lightly several times and then three more times after that, hard enough that his face scrunches, before he looks back up with that same smile though this time it’s tilted into something softer, more sheepish and deliberate. 

“And would you happen to have any bandages? Bandaids?” he asks as he waves his hand, which is scraped to hell and back all the way down the palm. His voice sticks on the word  _ bandaids,  _ a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it uptick, like it’s not something he says often. All the little discontinuities are adding up and Ronan feels very much like he’s seeing something that he’s not supposed to be seeing, like he’s looking straight through the split skin on Richard Campbell Gansey III’s left hand and down to all the workings beneath it, to the muscle that he’s not meant to know of and the bone that he’s not meant to know of and the blood that’s a deep, scarlet red. That particular reality is a shock to Ronan’s system; a betrayal of a number of preconceived notions and all the better for it, because though Ronan hasn’t really  _ thought  _ much about Richard Campbell Gansey III, whenever he  _ has  _ crossed his mind the lighting has never been especially flattering. 

“Why the fuck would I have bandaids?” Ronan asks instead of voicing any of this. He wouldn't even know where to _start._ The boat shoes? The polo shirt? The boat shoes _and_ the polo shirt, both of which maybe could have been forgiven had they not been worn together?

“I’m not sure. Luck of the draw? Running into someone who happens to be carrying bandaids when you need them would be very lucky, you have to admit,” Richard Campbell Gansey III says, very matter-of-fact and with the sort of confidence that gets people places whether they’re allowed to be there or not. It’s the conversational equivalent of a hard hat and clipboard, camouflage and purpose rolled up into one neat little package and applied with all the grace of somebody who knows what they’re doing because they’ve done it before. Now that said, Richard Campbell Gansey III may be Richard Campbell Gansey III but Ronan Lynch is Ronan Lynch and Ronan Lynch has never been afraid to call people out on their bullshit, and that is definitely  _ bullshit _ \- it makes no fucking sense! Wouldn’t it be luckier to just not run into anyone at all? Forego the need for bandaids entirely?

“That makes no fucking sense. Wouldn’t it be luckier to just not run into anyone?”

“Depends on where you’re looking to end up,” Gansey- and Ronan’s settled on  _ Gansey  _ for Richard Campbell Gansey III, as everything else feels either too familiar or too clunky, and Ronan doesn’t have the time for either of those- says. “Or what you consider  _ lucky _ , I suppose.”

“I consider not fucking up my hands because some idiot wasn’t looking where he was going  _ lucky _ ,” Ronan shoots back, the harsher edge he takes on sometimes slipping into his voice before he’s got a chance to think twice. Well, he thinks as a flicker of amusement-laced surprise flits across Gansey’s face, too late now. He’s never really been one for diluting himself anyways, not when he can help it, and as of late he’s been very good at rooting out situations where he can be as much as himself as he can while making as much of a scene as he can. It’s a hobby at this point, like knitting if knitting involved pissing as many people off as you could in the shortest amount of time possible. Regardless, Gansey holds up his hands in mock defeat, takes another look at them and winces full-body- right down to his stomach- and then looks around at the mess they’ve made and winces again. 

It isn’t pretty. They’re still both sprawled out on the ground, and Ronan’s palms are clean but his knuckles are bleeding and the pages from one of Gansey’s books are all folded and creased down into the concrete and there’s a rip in the leg of his jeans that he’s pretty sure wasn’t there before but it’s honestly a little difficult to tell. Gansey looks more and more horrified with each passing second, eyes wide and glasses so close to the end of his nose that Ronan wants to tell him to push them back up before they’ve got another problem that they’ll have to deal with, and to add insult to injury the sun is creeping closer to the horizon, drawing their shadows long. It’s going to be dark soon. The sky is burnt orange, heavy with the growing threat of a nighttime storm, and Gansey’s hands are red with a murky mix of blood and dirt.

“Oh dear,” he murmurs as he brings them closer to his face, squinting. His polo shirt is growing more muted in the dying light and is nearly bearable by now. Ronan imagines that it would look its best in a room that was pitch-black. “Is that gravel?”

The waver in Gansey’s voice, the incredulity and the morbid curiosity is enough to pull Ronan’s attention back to Gansey’s face and consequently his hands. There is indeed gravel. It looks sort of painful. 

“Probably,” Ronan says, intentionally vague. Gansey looks like he’s about to pass out and there’s no point in helping  _ that  _ along if he doesn’t have to. Ronan doesn’t want to have to drag Gansey to the hospital, if only because everyone in town would hear about it (people talk and talk and talk) and Ronan would prefer for people to be talking about something cooler if they have to be talking about him at  _ all _ . 

“Oh  _ dear, _ ” Gansey repeats, looking as forlorn as any one person can be. “Oh  _ shit. _ ”

Ronan snorts. He can’t help it; there’s something about the way that Gansey tries to fit voice around the swear that, when taken with the near theatrical, downtrodden gazing at his hand and prior knowledge of his reputation, turns his whole straight-backed demeanor into the funniest thing Ronan’s seen in  _ weeks.  _ Gansey looks cowed, a little embarrassed, a little off-guard, but he coughs once and looks down over his shoulder and blinks again, three times fast, before looking back up.

“Right,” he says, voice is all business again. It’s almost impressive how quickly he’s pulled himself back together right up until he goes to clap his hands together and realizes the second before he connects that that isn’t an option at the moment unless he wants to make even more of a mess of himself. He looks so lost afterwards, with his glasses askew and hair stuck up in tufts and hands suspended an inch from each other right in front of his face that Ronan almost feels sorry for him;  _ almost  _ because while this is certainly a tragedy in motion, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that for all that he is, Richard Campbell Gansey III is fundamentally a  _ train wreck _ , it’s also  _ really fucking funny _ .

_ Really fucking funny.  _

So Ronan laughs, one of the big ones from his stomach that travels up into his chest and down to his fingertips and leaves everything warm and gleeful and a little giddy, the novelty of the situation dawning on him and full and bringing reality with it until he’s bubbling all over and painfully aware of the pulsing in his knuckles and the way that Gansey’s eyes widen just a bit before crashing back down into something he’s deemed permissible by some set of standards that make no sense to anyone outside of his tax bracket. 

“I’m Richard. Gansey. Richard Campbell Gansey III, but I just go by Gansey,” Gansey says. 

“Alright Campbell,” Ronan replies, and then breaks out into laughter again because he’s  _ funny  _ goddammit, and a little bit of a jerk but in his defense he had plans and those plans were interrupted and now he’s got blood trickling down his hands and no way that he’s going to let that slide without something in return, even if that something is just ten seconds of subpar amusement. 

“Ha ha,” Gansey grumbles, enunciating very clearly and looking more childish than a person like him would seem able to. “Very funny, Ronan.”

“And how the  _ fuck  _ do you know my name?” Ronan snaps, still light on the tail end of his laughter but with just enough bite that it hurts. 

“I know most people’s names,” Gansey says cryptically, and then fails to elaborate. Ronan doesn’t know why he thought that a person like Richard Campbell Gansey III had it in him to be straightforward; he supposes that that was a fundamental misunderstanding on his part, a communication error. Ronan doesn’t understand how people can be anything  _ other  _ than straightforward. 

“Anyways,” Gansey starts. “I was bringing some things back up to the library, the one by the elementary school? Hence the mess.” he gestures at the books where they lie spread out around them. They all have long, boring-looking titles, like something that would be read by a person who says  _ hence.  _ “And then I figured that it would be a waste of a nice day to spend it all driving from one building to the next, so I parked a block or two away and then walked. What about you? What were you doing?”

“Walking,” Ronan tells him. 

“Well yes, I know that,” Gansey says, face earnest and bright in a way that has Ronan suspecting the sarcasm flew right over his head. “But  _ why  _ were you walking?”

“Do I need a reason?” 

There is a park nearby, and that park has a lake and that lake has ducks. None of these are things that Gansey needs to know.

“I suppose not,” Gansey says, looking thoughtful. “But it would’ve been rude of me not to ask, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe it was rude of you  _ to  _ ask _ ,  _ you ever think of that?”

“I. I, well- Gansey begins, all repressed embarrassment and puffed-out chest, one hand held tightly in the other and the whole mess of fingers, blood and bone hovering an inch or two above his chest so as to preserve the integrity of the mustard-yellow polo shirt. He’s made of nothing but pent-up indignation for a moment, a petulant pout living in his bottom lip and a furrow making its way between his brows in a childish show of a harmless and genuine emotion, and Ronan is struck straight to the core by how  _ fun  _ it is to antagonize Richard Campbell Gansey III. 

“-my car,” Gansey finally continues after his little bit of rebellion has worked on through him and he’s back to how he’s always been. “That’s where I was going with that. I was trying to tell you that my car is close, because my hands are bleeding and your hands are bleeding, and we can get bandaids if we go in my car.”

“You tryin’ to lure me back to your car?” Ronan says, sure to make his voice dry as can be. “Looking to murder someone in the forest today?”

“Not today,” Gansey tells him earnestly, face bright, and then it seems to catch up to him and he grimaces. “Not ever. That would not be conducive to my image.” 

“Which is the first reason that murder is bad.”

Gansey just looks at him, sort of helpless, sort of lost, and Ronan decides that he’s been enough of a dick for now and hoists himself to his feet as he brushes off his jeans and inspects the backs of his hands. Time to cut Richard Campbell Gansey III some slack, he supposes. Oh the things he does when his conscience comes a-knocking, when the hours drag themselves closer to night and he runs smack into strange boys that he grows attached to with the slapdash intimacy afforded only by being a) sprawled out on the sidewalk in solidarity, dual victims of gravity or b) Ronan Lynch, who is prone to falling fast and hard. Probably because he’s so tall. 

“Well?” he says regardless, still careful to sound as disinterested as he can. “Are we gonna go get some shit to clean this mess up or what? You can show me your murder car.”

Gansey does not scramble, but he gets his things together- carefully, picking things up in all sorts of strange ways to avoid his bloodied hands, plucking papers between his fingers and clasping the larger objects between his wrists and maneuvering some of the smaller things back into his bag without picking them up at all- and stands with a huff and a heave, looking somewhere just to the left of Ronan’s face. 

“Nobody’s ever been murdered in my car, I swear,” he tells him. 

“Not even once?” Ronan intones, one eyebrow raised and voice flat with the effort of keeping his laughter contained. 

“Not even once,” Gansey promises. And who is Ronan to argue with Richard Campbell Gansey III and his car that no one was  _ ever  _ murdered in, nope, definitely not, he promises? Who is he to argue with people who look to be made of bronze in the flickery, yellow-white light of the streetlamps, who keep their hands arched away from their expensive sweaters, who curl their fingertips around the strap of their bag and look at him like this is the most exciting thing that’s happened ever, in their whole entire life?

No one, no one, no one at all. 

And so it goes.

Gansey’s parked a block and a half away, nearby as promised, his car a gleaming mass of mess and metal painted bright orange that looks like it was built right there in the parking space, right from the ground up. Ronan doesn’t think that it’s actually able to _move,_ mess that it is, and he’s side-eying the _hell_ out of Gansey but not getting so much as a twitch in return, so he figures that it must be safe, potential past, present, and future murders aside. The two of them pile into the car with an ease that feels natural- Gansey in the driver’s seat, Ronan in the passenger’s, Gansey’s things placed carefully on the seats behind them and Ronan’s thrown haphazardly to the floor- and then with a turn of the key and a few, wheezy, hiccupy gasps, the horrid excuse for a car is up and running. 

Gansey shoots him looks from the corner of his eye as they pull from the parking lot out to the road, fingers tapping at the steering wheel and face neutral and the sleeves of his sweater down over the heels of his hands- to stop the blood from staining the leather, Ronan realizes. The sweater’s either easier to clean or easier to replace, and frankly he doesn’t care which. Either way Gansey’s looking at him like he wants to say something, and either way Ronan can’t  _ stand  _ people who  _ look  _ like they want to say something and then don’t say it, so he’s on the defensive: his mind’s moving at a mile a minute, and all his lines are sharp as can be and his bottom lip is curling up against his teeth.

“What?” he grumbles when he can stand it no longer, lips pressed tight together and muscles wound up. They’re stuck at a red light now, and in the short time that they’ve been driving Ronan has concluded that the way that Gansey’s staring at him is, in fact,  _ bizarrely  _ intense for their having known each other for all of an hour. The light turns green and the Camaro shoots off, Gansey’s eyes sliding back to the road and the easy, lilting curve of his spine against the leather seats of the car. There’s several more excruciating seconds, each pulled out so long that they feel like hours, before Gansey visibly comes to some conclusion, steels himself, takes one big breath, and then finally, finally speaks:

“So. While we’re here,” he says, “What do you know about Welsh kings?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment! I love hearing from you guys!!
> 
> Some more character notes: I’d write Ronan after the start of canon pretty differently. I feel like that goes without saying, but so much of how we see him is shaped by events that happen after this fic but before canon. I’m not entirely settled on Gansey yet either, but from what I can figure he’s pretty dependent on his social interactions being predictable, and as someone who is also heavily reliant on social situations going certain ways I can say that when they don’t, or else when something happens that you aren’t prepared for, things can start getting Weird


End file.
